Kinetica

"If this is what racing will be like in the future, then the sport is in very big trouble."

I won't beat around the bush at all. This game sucks! There are a plethora of bugs and control issues that kills this game before you turn your system on. Read on if you want to know why this game got as bad a score as it did.

Story: 1/10
Nine morons (3 being unlockable) decide to gather and have a race for no obvious reason. There are no camera crews, audiences or anything that would merit a paycheck, so these 9 people are racing to be the best of an unknown racing league. That isn't the official plot, but it is what I derived from the game. I guess glory is a dead ideal in the future.

Music: 2/10
The developers opted to put the crappiest techno tunes that $4 can buy. Mercifully for all of us, the music is at such a low volume that it is nearly impossible to hear it unless you turn your tv up VERY high. In case you're wondering, this category got a 2 only because the developers were generous enough to minimize suffering caused from playing this game by making the volume low.

Sound Effects: 1/10
This is pretty sad. The screams when you fall sound more like a scream of ecstasy from having sex than a scream of fright. I might be getting picky with my next point, but when a car stops all of a sudden shouldn't there be a loud screeching sound? Not in this game.

Visuals: 1/10
Welcome to the Land of Really Small People! Everyone in this game is so tiny. Unless you have 20/20 eyesight, you might have to do a bit of squinting your eyes in order to see your character. Also, the developers must've been hanging out with Team Ninja or whoever the morons responsible for Dead or Alive call themselves. Every character in this game, male and female, wear tight body suits that squeeze there muscles and everything. Another game using the Dead or Alive method of covering bad gameplay. Getting back on point though, these visuals could've been done on a Sega Saturn.

Gameplay: 1/10
The controls in this game makes 50% of my hatred towards this game. You have to press L1 to use power-ups (which are more harmful then good) and you move by holding the right analog up and use the left analog to turn. You could use X to accelerate, but that is pointless because you use the R3 button to syphon nitro energy. Each racer has 5 stats: top speed (duh), acceleration (duh again), cornering (I'll explain why this stat is stupid), mass (pointless), and something else that I can't remember. Some racers can supposedly handle corners better, but with the touchy control, this is negligible because the you'd think the track was covered in bacon grease and ice. Mass is the ability to handle collisions with other racers. This is stupid because if you're winning like you're supposed to, then you wouldn't hit the other freaking racers! This game has some bugs too. These are the bugs: 1)fall through the floor, 2)lose your power-up (a rare helpful bug), 3)get stuck in the sky mid-jump, 4)the game freezes, 5)falling off the side puts you a fifth of the track ahead, and 6)car randomly slows down.

Replayability: It had some?
A bad game=no replay or play value. I rest my case.

To Rent or Buy: Borrow only if you NEED to try it out
Wipeout and its 1 billion clones were all lame. I wouldn't waste $30 buying or $4 renting. If you can, borrow it. If you can't borrow, then forget about it and play Need For Speed games or Mario Kart (SNES version).

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 05/03/02, Updated 05/03/02